Randy Pausch is a married father of three, a very popular professor at Carnegie Mellon University—and he is dying. He is suffering from pancreatic cancer, which he says has returned after surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Doctors say he has only a few months to live.
In September 2007, Randy gave a final lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon that has since been downloaded more than a million times on the Internet. “There’s an academic tradition called the ‘Last Lecture.’ Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?” Randy says. “Well, for me, there’s an elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room, for me, it wasn’t hypothetical.”
I took a short jaunt to Seattle to attend a wedding, and for the occasion I had my new DSLR, a Nikon D40, delivered ahead of me. The bride had asked me to help out by taking candid pictures, which provided the perfect excuse for a new toy!
I learned that it’s a bad idea to take on a new challenge (wedding photography) alongside new tools (opened the camera box a few hours before wedding preparations started). Nevertheless, it was certainly educational, and I learned a lot by overdoing it: snapped 850 pictures, 250 of which were completely unusable, and tried my hand at individually post processing the other 600.
My main source of coin surplus works like this: 5 dollar bills - cost of coffee - laundry money = coin surplus.
It’s amazing how many coins can accumulate from such a formula, albeit over a period of time: 2,610 bits of metal that were a little troublesome to lug to the bank.
Thankfully, nowadays I have a coin sorting “bucket”, like the one below, to help out. Since we haven’t reached an all-plastic society yet, I highly recommend getting one; I found mine at Staples (it’s not listed online strangely).
I’m hurriedly researching mosquito bite treatments at the time of this writing. Normally, I get rarely see a mosquito, much less get bitten by one, ensconced in my urban bubble of concrete. Yesterday, however, I spent a couple hours on a hike thrashing through pretty thick brush - with bare arms, neck, legs, and no insect repellent.
Assuredly, I got what I most certainly deserve, and I got it about two dozen times. Since I cut my hair recently, they even reached my scalp!
The trouble with the Internet, though, it’s hard to separate truth from fiction. For example, should I really:
Apply hot water and cover the bite with scotch tape to “suck out” the mosquito saliva?
Mix some crushed aspirin and water to apply as paste?
I think I’ll beg the local pharmacist for something from behind the counter. It’s strictly psychological, but if it’s kept behind the counter, it must be the “good stuff’, right?
A sharp turn at an intersection and all manner of belongings get tossed about, some even left behind in the dust. Among them is my old blog, replaced by this one.
It’s not quite change for the sake of change, however. Switching to a mainstream blogging platform like WordPress is simply more efficient for the purpose of writing for a blog. I can’t tweak, tinker, and learn in the same way as I used to, but that’s a good thing considering I’m trying to make time for new activities.
What may those be? Some ideas percolating in my grey matter:
Go inline skating more often. It’s summer, and I’ve used my skates only a handful of times in the last couple years.
Learn the full potential of my new camera, the Nikon D40. Haven’t picked it up yet though…
Rock climb regularly. After my third time, I decided I enjoyed the sport enough to get climbing shoes of my own; haven’t broken them in yet!
Find a new place to live. I’ve been here six years…
Buy a car. The Zipcar bill rises higher and higher, and I miss having my own car to indulge my whimsies.
… and more…!
I won’t get to all of them, of course, but it’s a trial-and-error process. Try an activity for awhile, see if it sticks and becomes a habit; if not, try another one. Then eventually complain about not having enough time, drastically clean house by cutting what is no longer as valuable or important as before, and repeat.
I’m moving my blog again… This will cut off the temptation to incessantly tweak my blog’s underlying software, as I am wont to do. Hopefully, this will free some time for other pursuits. I don’t think it was the wrong choice to host my own blog, as I learned a lot from it, but priorities change as time passes. I still get enough “computer knowledge” food from other hobbies, anyway.
Computer type entries will go to astradele.wordpress.com and the general “follow my life” type entries will go to agfung.wordpress.com. I’m unsure whether I will migrate my old blog entries over, but in the spirit of trying to free time for other things, perhaps not.
